Life is a State of Mind

We got back from a fantastic Windjammer Cruise late last night. A brief log of the adventure follows…

On Saturday the 18th we flew to St. Thomas and U.S. Airways lost one of our checked bags. We checked into the Galleon House B&B hours late because we waited in a line of 80 odd families who had also lost luggage on the same flight.

Galleon House is nice, and we had a terrific view of Charlotte Amalie from the balcony of our room. It is quite a hike up stairs with luggage to get in and out of Galleon, but it is right above Hirve restaurant and 1829 (another inn or b&b). The pool at Galleon made up for a frustrating travel day. We had a very good dinner at Tavern Inn (Hirve was booked already), and enjoyed some live jazz and folk music there too.

Sunday we continued to call U.S. Air every few hours looking for our luggage and we got a different story from them with every call. We also decided to accept an invitation to hear a presentation on Travel Club International, which we decided to try out despite being burned in the Med Resorts International time-share rip-off scheme in the early 1990s.
I had to buy shorts, t-shirts, and sandals because I had no available clothes. U.S. Air’s ever-changing story about our lost luggage was that it was now found and it would be delivered as soon as the 5pm flight came in from Charlotte, NC. We boarded the Windjammer ship S. V. Legacy late in the afternoon, and had dinner on board. Still no luggage, but we were not scheduled to set sail until mid-afternoon Monday, so we encouraged U.S. Air to deliver the allegedly found luggage as soon as possible. Erci’s diver certification cards, my clothes, and the batteries and chargers for our underwater lights and cameras were in the missing bag, so we were unable to plan to SCUBA dive on Monday, though we signed up for the rest of the week in the hopes that the bag would arrive on time.

Monday we took a shore excursion to Megan’s Bay, which is a very nice beach for swimming and relaxing. The ride over the mountains of St. Thomas was pretty, and we found ourselves wishing we had more time to explore the island. When we got back to the ship, the bag was not in our cabin as expected, so we contacted the purser and U.S. Airways again - this time they said the bag was on St Thomas, and the driver was trying to find the ship. He did not find us by scheduled departure, and we set sail missing one bag. Our purser said she’d try to recover the bag on Tuesday as she had to ferry back to St Thomas from St John anyway. Another passenger was also missing his luggage, with all his dive gear and certification cards as well. Sailing was beautiful, though the Legacy is a heavy ship and continued motoring even under sail, but that is the price we pay for some luxury I gather.

Tuesday I dove with the other SCUBA divers on Legacy, minus both my wife and the other passenger/diver who had lost luggage. Diving out of a rigid inflatable (Caribe) is a challenge, and a ton of work, but the Legacy dive master team does most of the work for the paying passengers (those guys really earn their pay), and it turned out to be far less of a problem than I imagined. Waters around St Thomas, St John, and Grass Cay are calm and clear this time of year, and we saw some pretty cool life below. Erci went to Cruz Bay to get a copy of her dive certification just in case the luggage never arrived, and explored St John a little while I was diving. We tried to sea kayak but were unprepared for it, and bailed out for a relaxing afternoon on the ship (can you say “Rum-Swizzle-Time!”). Our lost bag (and the other passenger’s lost bags) finally arrived late in the afternoon, thanks to the heroic efforts of our favorite purser, Laurie. There was $60 in extra fees, which we’ll be charging back to U.S. Air soon.

Wednesday was awesome, we swam with dolphins on Tortola, and then took a catamaran sail over to Peter Island for some excellent snorkeling and then sailed back again. Later in the evening the ship’s crew and passengers threw a pretty amazing party on board, and we’ll just leave the details to those who were there…

Thursday morning I dove the Chimney and Coral Gardens and Erci relaxed on board, her ears were bothering her so she decided to skip diving. We then went to The Baths on Virgin Gorda, which are an amazing collection of large rocks and caves on a lovely beach by the sea. We snorkeled, scrambled, and hiked away a few thousand calories, then had another great party on-board the Legacy while the ship sailed for Jost Van Dyke and then the party moved ashore to Foxy’s beach club.

Friday morning we sailed for the West end of Jost Van Dyke for a beach BBQ, then sailed from there back to St Thomas to conclude the cruise.Saturday, we went into Charlotte Amalie to order sandals from Zora’s and shop for rum.Full directory of pictures is at http://scottnolan.org/Legacy_Cruise_2006/ (warning, they are large).

The past several days have been exciting here in Virginia, at least for those of us following and planning to work in U.S. Senate and Congressional Election campaigns. Two days ago the races for Senator George Allen’s seat heated up as James Webb announced he would be will seek the Democratic nomination. Today I found out that Judy Feder will seek the Democratic nomination to challenge incumbent Congressman Frank Wolf. Apparently she has been running since about the 29th of January and I missed the announcement over at Raising Kaine.

James Webb has his own website at jameswebb.com. Harris Miller was already running against Allen, but I cannot take him seriously because of his lobbying history and his reluctance to support Verified Voting. According to politics1.com, Gail Parker will be challenging Allen from the Independent Green party.

There is a bit of a biography on Judy Feder at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). Wilbur Wood will be challenging Wolf as well, but as a Libertarian.

General Election should be Tuesday, November 7th. Lots of choices is a very good thing.

I am trying to figure out the right way to get certain parts of our travel plans published so that people can join us or make plans with us easier. I am stumbling around here, but I’ll try a post first, then figure out how to put it in my sidebar later.

February 11th and the morning of the 12th I am hosting La Belle Compagnie at my home for the next open shop, film review night, and company meeting.

February 18th through 25th, we are going to try out one of those Windjammer barefoot cruises to the Virgin Islands for a much needed vacation and the chance for some long-overdue underwater time.

March 11th and the morning of the 12th I am hosting La Belle Compagnie at my home for another open shop, film review night, and company meeting.

March 18th and 19th I’ll be with La Belle Compagnie at Military Through the Ages at Jamestown fort. Come see all the re-enactors and living history groups through time. March 27th through April 30th my graceful wife and I will be in Las Vegas competing in the Arthur Murray dance competition.

April 7th and 8th we’ll be back at the Sheraton Premiere here in Tyson’s Corners/Vienna VIrginia for the Spring Freestyles ballroom dance competition. Several people have asked if they can come and watch - you can. The best way is to become a student, and attend the show as a dancer, that gets you tables and seating on the floor itself, but it is not cheap. Alternatively guests can watch from the balcony (not as social, nor as close, but you do get a bird’s eye view). The competition begins Friday evening with newcomers dancing at about 7:30pm, they get to the longer term dancers (us) later in the evening, typically from about 9:15pm through 11:00pm. The competition continues at 10:00am Saturday, goes through lunch and typically stops at around 4:00pm. There is a formal ball Saturday evening which can be attended separately, social dancing, good food, and amazing professional dance shows. People are welcome to attend that as well, but they should be prepared to commit to the ball a few weeks in advance (food must be arranged) and the fee for the ball is typically around $150 (which is pricey, too pricey for Sheraton food, but you do get the amazing pro-shows and lots of chances to dance with people who know how to dance).

April 8th is the April La Belle Compagnie open shop and film review that my wife and I will have to miss, but we should be able to attend the Sunday (9th) company meeting.

April 22nd and 23rd I’ll be with La Belle Compagnie at Marching Through Time at Marietta Manor in Bowie, MD (a local living history event if you want to come see living history in person).

We are postponing our planned Belgium and Netherlands trip, probably until 2007. Mostly to join Mike and Joan for their wedding in Vegas in September.

The Medieval Centre in Denmark is a place that I really, really must go see sometime. B&L have been there and they say that people from La Belle Compagnie are invited to come out in costume sometime, that would be splendid.

I love Jon Stewart’s awesome show. Fun segment about blogs.

It have to confess, I get about 65% of my news from blogs now as they are faster to publish and have more depth than anything on TV, Radio, and traditional newspapers! Accuracy still needs to be double checked and confirmed, but amazingly - the biggest blog site’s have better accuracy and checking built into them than TV (though newspapers and radio are still leading the accuracy and rapid corrections areas).

As much as I despise his horrible track record of poor leadership and dishonesty, I think we should try to connect with President Bush. He has a rare window of opportunity:

1) Essentially three years left to his term, and he knows he can’t be re-elected.
2) The public already disapproves of his administration.
3) He has both houses of congress and the supreme court in his pocket.
4) The rhetoric he used, while probably all lies, was essentially an accurate list of exactly what we should be focusing on as far as foreign policy (get off oil, get more from wind/solar/water, reduce consumption, and yes - even get some energy from nuclear power).

It’s time for him to actually show that he can lead (we’ve been waiting for 5 years for this allegedly great leader to emerge). He has nothing to lose!

Imagine if he were to push congres hard for legislation that taxed the hell out of gasoline and all fossil fuels, and used that money to subsidize ethanol, solar, wind, water power. It would piss people off in the short term, but be exactly what we really need in the long term.

Imagine if he were to try to motivate his whack-o base by stressing the emergency of oil-shortages to get us all to really work to build an oil free infrastructure for public stransportation. We have only a few decades of oil left with which we must bootstrap ourselves out of our dependence on oil.

No President who wants to be re-elected can try any of that - because taxing gas and re-committing to some nuclear power would be political suicide… but Bush can’t be re-elected, he’s already on his second term. No president who has to fight really hard to get votes in the house and senate on a law can do this, but Bush already has both houses lined up with him.

President Bush is uniquely positioned to actually do something about energy policy, and he is the only one who could possibly tackle some of the really hard to do political suicide moves that need to be done! He has nothing to lose, and he could gain long term historical respect if he does it…

So how to we reach out and shake him into action? How do we watchdog him if he starts, so that special interests and corporate greed don’t pervert some of this into more line the pockets of the wealty laws, yet keep momentum for actually getting an energy policy that is 30 years overdue?

I had to resort to blogs for my news because the so-called mainstream media simply are not covering this, not even the local stations for our local state senate race (they should have their broadcasting rights pulled, they are not doing their duty that comes from getting a slice of the public’s airwaves).

As usual, Waldo has excellent coverage and he has links to the state board of elections’ results. The short answer is that reason has prevailed in the 33rd district, and even in a traditionally conservative area the voters have rejected the extremist right wing agenda of Mick Staton for the relatively moderate/conservative Mark Herring despite Senator elect Herring’s Democratic party affiliation. Thank you voters for thinking this one through. Looks to me like if you replace a moderate Republican with a wing-nut, you might just lose the election to a conservative Democrat in Virginia (last year’s 67th delegate race, this years 33rd state senate seat). Perhaps it’s time for the moderates to throw the wing-nuts out of what used to be the Grand Old Party? Re-enforcing that theory is the story of the 32nd delegate seat last year, when an entrenched incumbent wing-nut (Dick Black) was tossed out by an irate voting public for a relatively moderate Delegate Poisson. It is definitely time to sit up and notice if you are a Republican.

Face it - one of two things is happening: either Virginia is turning blue, or you need to stop trying to get extremists elected because they will lose. As someone who’d like to see the state go green, would prefer the first option, but I can certainly understand who that would scare traditional Republicans - so you must gamble on the second option and pray. Perhaps you should have tried running former delegate Gary Reese?